Etymology

The film industry based in Kolkata, West Bengal, is sometimes referred as "Tollywood", a portmanteau of the words Tollygunge, a neighbourhood of Calcutta where most of the Bengali film studios are located, and Hollywood. "Tollywood" was the very first Hollywood-inspired name, dating back to a 1932 article in the American Cinematographer by Wilford E. Deming, an American engineer who was involved in the production of the first Indian sound film. He gave the industry the name "Tollywood" because the Tollygunge district in which it was based rhymed with "Hollywood", and because Tollygunge was the center of the cinema of India as a whole at the time much like Hollywood was in the cinema of the United States. "Tollywood" went on to inspire the name "Bollywood" (as the Mumbai-based industry overtook the one in Tollygunge), which in turn inspired many other similar names.[1]

Early development

Silent era: 1919-1930

Hiralal Sen is credited as one of Bengal's, and India's first directors. However, these were all silent films. Hiralal Sen is also credited as one of the pioneers of advertisement films in India. The first Bengali-language movie was the silent feature Billwamangal, produced by the Madan Theatre Company of Calcutta and released on 8 November 1919, only six years after the first full-length Indian feature film, Raja Harish Chandra, was released.[5]

The early beginnings of the "talking film" industry go back to the early 1930s, when it came to British India, and to Calcutta. The movies were originally made in Urdu or Persian as to accommodate a specific elite market. One of the earliest known studios was the East India Film Company. The first Bengali film to be made as a talkie was Jamai Shashthi, released in 1931. It was at this time that the early heroes of the Bengali film industry like Pramathesh Barua and Debaki Bose were at the peak of their popularity. Barua also directed a number of movies, exploring new dimension in Indian cinema. Debaki Bose directed Chandidas in 1932; this film is noted for its breakthrough in recording sound. Sound recordist Mukul Bose found out solution to the problem of spacing out dialogue and frequency modulation.

Another prominent Bengali filmmaker is Mrinal Sen, whose films have been well-known for their Marxist views. During his career, Mrinal Sen's film have received awards from almost all major film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Moscow, Karlovy Vary, Montreal, Chicago, and Cairo. Retrospectives of his films have been shown in almost all major cities of the world.[27]

Another Bengali filmmaker, Ritwik Ghatak, began reaching a global audience long after his death; beginning in the 1990s, a project to restore Ghatak's films was undertaken, and international exhibitions (and subsequent DVD releases) have belatedly generated an increasingly global audience. Some of his films have strong similarities to later famous international films, such as Ajantrik (1958) resembling the Herbie films (1967–2005) and Bari Theke Paliye (1958) resembling François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959).

1980s

In the 1980s, however, the Bengal film industry went through a period of turmoil, with a shift from its traditional artistic and emotional inclinations to an approach more imitating the increasingly more popular Hindi films, along with a decline in the audience and critical appreciation, with notable exceptions of the works of directors like Gautam Ghose. However, even at this time, a number of actors and actresses enjoyed popularity, including Tapas Pal, Prosenjit, Chiranjit, Rituparna Sengupta and others. However, toward the end of the 90s, with the a number of directors coming increasingly into prominence, including Rituparno Ghosh, Gautam Ghose, Aparna Sen, Sandip Ray among others, a number of popular and critically acclaimed movies have come out of the Bengali film industry in recent years. These include, Unishe April, Titli, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Bombaiyer Bombete, etc and signal a resurgence of the Bengali film industry.

2000s

The market for Bengali films has expanded to a 340-million-strong Bengali audience in Bangladesh, West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. The industry could truly flourish if films from this state have a proper distribution network. While around 50 films are produced in West Bengal every year, only 30 make it to the theatres.[36]

2008

Bengali cinema has never seen such a flood of releases within one year as it did in 2008. The year marks a record for new talents, new directors, young producers, a new genre of ensemble films, a few off-beat films, a few films for children, an animation film and films in languages other than Bengali but having a distinct Bengali atmosphere. This, alongside ten releases of Prosenjit, the numero uno, among the 61 releases we saw last year and some experimental films new directors stepped in with. The predominantly young audience reveals a marked preference for fast-paced romance-cum-action films featuring strapping young actors instead of the ageing Mithun or the dropped-jaw Prosenjit. Shibaji, Ghar Jamai, Mr. Fantoosh, and Takkar, were the successful Prosenjit starrers. Among films not starring Prosenjit, the successful films were Chirodini Tumi Je Amaar, Bhalobasa Bhalobasa, Love Story, Mon Maane Naa, Chirosaathi and Tintorettor Jishu, again a Feluda adventure from Sandip Ray. Prosenjit's Mahakaal did average business Mithun's sole commercial release Satyameva Jayate was a super flop while his off-mainstream release, Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Kaalpurush, was taken off the theatres within a fortnight even though the film sees Mithun in one of his career-best performances in Bengali cinema. Bengali cinema's first animation film Laal Kalo, did well among the Bengali audience but its Hindi version was a super flop.

Off-beat films got a very bad beating at the box office and even the Big B in his first English-language film, The Last Lear, under the directorial baton of Rituparno Ghosh, could hardly draw in any audience at all. Rituparno's moving Khela, a self-reflective film that repeats his passion for pointing fingers at the brutal opportunistic and selfish mindset of ‘committed’ filmmakers, was also a flop though it was popular among kids. Joy Ganguly's Hindi language film Via Darjeeling, supposedly a thriller with a Bollywood cast, came a cropper simply because it was a terrible film while Buddhadeb Dasgupta's other film Swapner Din, released around three years after it was made, also did not do well commercially. Suman Mukhopadhyay's second film Chaturanga, a beautiful adaptation of a complex Tagore novella, did not go down well with an audience so fond of Swapan Saha, Sujit Guha and Haranath Chakraborty potboilers. Shubrajit Mitra's much-hyped Mon Amour Shesher Kobita Revisited, inspired by a Tagore creation, Manoj Michigan's Hello Kolkata, an ensemble film, also did not do well at all. Mon Amour Shesher Kobita Revisited proves that without a powerful and tight-knit script, even the best of actors, singers, music and technical excellence can do nothing to save a film. Arin Paul's Doshta Dosh told an unusually funny story that failed because it lacked focus. Rati Agnihotri's first Bangla film Aainatey was also a flop as were two new directors’ debuts, Arjun Chakraborty's Tollylights and Sougata Roy Burman's 90 Hours, a slickly made psychological thriller. Both films directed by the talented cinematographer Riingo, Neel Rajar Deshe and Love, were massive flops because despite technical excellence, the films did not have a cohesive script and did not have much to say either.

The biggest star draws were Koel Mullick, Dev, Priyanka Sarkar, Rahul, Hiron, Shoham and Srabonti. Music wise, Jeet Ganguly is surely going places while as far as direction goes, Raj Chakraborty has his hands full of assignments he can pick and choose from. Rangan is likely to begin his second film this year and as one finishes this summing up, news trickles in that Bengali cinema will open its innings in 2009 with the release of Aniruddha Roychoudhury's Antaheen starring Aparna Sen and Sharmila Tagore in the same film for the first time with music by Shantanu Moitra.

Budgets

70 Bengali movies are released every year and are produced with a budget of Rs. 2 lakh to Rs. 1.5 crore per movie in 2008. India's big house Reliance Big Entertainment and Home Entertainment announced the most expensive Bengali movie will be made with a budget of Rs 3 crore, while other regional movies like the ones in Tamil will have a budget of Rs 40 crore as on 2008[37]. For reference: a crore rupee = 10 million rupees (roughly 160,000 euros), and a lakh = 100,000 rupees.

The Bengali film industry, which had been a beacon for the country's film industry until the 1980s, is in a turnaround mode. At a time when Bollywood continues its roller-coaster ride, there are cheers in the Bengali film industry with several commercial successes. The dark period of the 1990s when Bengali tinsel town was on a steep decline seems like a nightmare that's best forgotten. And, with the money pouring in, producers from other States are now knocking on the doors of Bengali directors.Industry sources say that the best proof of the comeback is seen in the increasing number of cinema houses showing Bengali films. Even a few years ago, of the 800 movie theatres in the State, no more than 350 were showing just Bengali films. The remaining had spread their risk showing a mix of either Hindi and English or Hindi and Bengali films.2008, nearly 700 theatres are showing Bengali films.

The movie, produced by Ramoji Films at a cost of Rs 65 lakh, recovered its costs within three weeks and is still raking in the moolah for its distributors, producers and theatre owners since last December.The movie has brought back the concept of family entertainment with Sandip Ray's gambit of contemporising the plot paying him rich dividend. Admitting that he did not expect this success, he told Life that he was now lining up another such film for release next year.Earlier, a film by award-winning director Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (The Tale of a Fallen Girl) produced by Arjoe Entertainments netted nearly Rs 7 crore through sale of overseas rights against a cost of Rs 60 lakh.Haranath Chakraborty His film Sathee (Companion) created a record by recouping over five times its production cost, although the film Chokher Bali, with big names like Aishwariya Rai, Rituparno Ghosh and Tagore, failed to yield expected results. The movie, billed at Rs 1.65 crore (the highest among Bengali films).[43]

Loose and unorganised production activities, dominated and dictated by providers of capital led to proliferation of sub-standard films, which were most often commercial failures.The recent successes have come through some concerted effort by Parallel Cinema which has tapped the domestic market, even while scouting the overseas ones, hitting the festival circuit somewhere in between. As such, celluloid creations of award-winning directors like Gautam Ghosh, Rituparno Ghosh and Aparna Sen started bringing money for their producers. However, at around the same time, movies in the commercial circuit (directors like to call them mainstream cinema) also started doing well, supported strongly by the response from the semi-urban areas.The big Bollywood banners such as Mukta Arts and Rajshri films are now showing interest in funding Bengali films.

Hollywood houses like Columbia Tristar have made their debut in distributing Bengali movies. According to industry experts, several issues need to be addressed to build on this resurgence and consolidate it.These include inadequate infrastructure, which often compels moviemakers to go outside the State for facilities pushing up costs, poor marketing and distribution and increasing competition from Bangladeshi films.the entertainment company in the RPG group, has decided to restrict its budget in film production to about Rs 5 crore and This would be a Rs 4-5-crore budget film.[44][45]

Music Directors

Awards

Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards-The oldest Association of Film critics in India, founded in 1937, by the inspiration and determination of the handful of pioneers amongst the then thin section of scribes that were drawn to film journalism with a lofty mission to serve the developing film journalism and film industry.

Organisations

Archive

The best archive of Bengali film is Bengali film directory (in English Language), Published in 1999, Nandan, West Bengal Film Centre (Calcutta). This directory book was edited by Ansu Sur and was compiled by Abhijit Goswami. It covers almost all released Bengali feature films from 1917 to 1998 with short descriptions including detailed cast and crew, director name, released date and released theater name.[46]